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Sunday, March 18, 2012

Cathedral priorities

St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York is being renovated.

“The $175 million restoration will take about five years andwill include what church officials described as a thoroughscrubbing: its 1,300 panels of stained glass will get protectiveglazing, pipes from its massive organ will be cleaned and acidrain and other deposits will be wiped away….

The Archdiocese of New York hopes to raise $125 million forthe second and third phase of the renovations from its 2.6million members and other sources.

"It's difficult in this time because there are so manyneeds... but we're asking people, to stretch a little tobeautify the cathedral and put it back to where it was," she [Helen Lowe, the executive director of development] said.”

Hmm. There’s a lot of ambiguity about how to count who is or isn’t a Catholic, but taken at face value $175 million is about $70 from each of the 2.6 million Catholics, or about $280 for a family of four.

I’m not a New Yorker, and on visits to New York it has never occurred to me to visit St. Patrick’s Cathedral. On visits to Europe I’ve visited some of those great cathedrals, but these are hundreds of years old and typically both architecturally and sociologically important. American cathedrals aren’t as old, are mostly architectural throwbacks, and were never as important to the life of the community as, say, Chartres.

If the 2.6 million Catholics got to vote on this, I wonder if this was a way they would wish to spend their money?

Is it worth it? Some might say that this makes more sense than tax subsidized sports stadiums, but that cuts no ice with me since I oppose them as well.